When mushrooms eat plastic

In 2011, Yale University students working in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest found Pestalotiopsis microspora, a fungus that could actually eat plastic. Not just break it down slowly over time, but digest polyurethane as a food source, even without oxygen present. This discovery opened up a new field of possibilities for addressing plastic pollution.

What makes mycoremediation, using fungi to clean up pollution, particularly elegant is how it differs from our current recycling methods. Mechanical recycling involves grinding plastic down and remelting it, but this produces lower-quality material each time. Chemical recycling requires intense heat and energy.

Fungi, by contrast, work at normal temperatures, powered by their own metabolism. They're essentially running a waste processing plant using nothing but their biological machinery.

Dierkx's project focuses on three fungal species chosen for their proven ability to break down specific types of plastic: oyster mushrooms, turkey tail, and split gill mushrooms. While Plastik Protein envisions 2049, the underlying biology isn't science fiction. Pestalotiopsis microspora genuinely degrades polyurethane. Another fungus, Aspergillus tubingensis, discovered at a waste site in Pakistan, breaks down PET. Research teams worldwide are cataloguing dozens of plastic-degrading fungi and the specific enzymes they produce.

As these fungi consume plastic, they don't just make it disappear;  they incorporate that carbon into their own structure. Specifically, into mycelium, the thread-like network that forms the main body of a fungus. Mycelium is surprisingly nutritious: it contains all essential amino acids, B vitamins, and minerals. In effect, the plastic becomes protein.

Mycelium has a mild, slightly earthy taste that blends well with other foods. Chocolate not only masks this but also provides something people genuinely want to eat. With over 7 million tons of chocolate consumed globally each year, it's one of the world's most universally recognised comfort foods.

But the chocolate bar does more than deliver protein. Each bar's packaging clearly states which plastic waste the mycelium consumed: PET bottles, polyurethane foam, or plastic film. This transparency creates a direct link between what you're eating and what environmental problem it solves. The act of consumption becomes participation in a cleanup effort.

It also fundamentally reframes what waste is. Instead of seeing plastic as garbage that needs to be dealt with separately from food production, the project merges these two systems. Waste becomes a resource. Eating becomes regenerative.

This approach, integrating waste into biological cycles, connects to the work we've long explored with marine ingredients and regenerative materials. Rather than treating plastic pollution as something separate that requires industrial solutions, what if biological systems could process it the way they process everything else? What if food production and waste management weren't separate problems? This thinking seeks solutions that work within natural cycles rather than against them.

Will we actually eat chocolate bars made from plastic-eating mushrooms by 2049? Maybe not in exactly this form. But the questions behind the project are already pressing: How do we close material loops that remain open? How do we work with biological processes that are adapting to our synthetic environment? How do we design genuinely circular systems?

Plastik Protein offers one answer, grounded in real mycoremediation research and applied through speculative design. The broader principle stands: solutions to the problems we've engineered might increasingly come from biological systems, if we learn to collaborate with them properly.

Shop our candles

References: Odette Dierkx